


Worldly Goods

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 12:36:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim thinks about the after life.</p><p>First posted July 2004 at 852 Prospect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worldly Goods

**Author's Note:**

> I seem to have written a lot of death stories. Given the approach I take, I regard them more as grief stories. Original story notes from 852 are in the body of the work.

  
Not mine, dammit. Not mine.  
  
Where I live, it's winter right now, and I'm prone to S.A.D. I like dirgey songs. Feeling warned, are we?  


* * *

Depending on the surface and the circumstances, fingerprints can last a long time. A smooth plate is a good surface to take them, although it depends on the condition of the hands too. The dishes that he put away are at the bottom of the stack. It's not as if I ever use more than one. I wash it, I put it away on the top. If I wanted, I could find out if his prints are still there. But I won't. I'll just assume that his marks are there, his touch a ceramic layer away from me. 

We didn't do much with his room. It was just his old room. The bed turned into de facto storage space, covered with bits and pieces that had to be stacked somewhere else for the occasional visitor. Some of my stuff was moved here to make room for some of his stuff upstairs. It's not like he ever did much in here, except occasionally grieve a little. He'd take something out of a box and look at it, twist it in his hands, and then put it away again. It was hard to let him do it sometimes. 

I followed him in once, seduced his attention away from the memories to the present. The memories bit back as best they could. Clearing the bed was an incomplete rush job, and I ended up with a thin line of a bruise on my hip from the edge of a book cover, and a scratch across the back of a thigh from the corner of a plastic dust-jacket. Who cared, when he was breathing his way across my skin? 

I really should put his clothes out. Wrap them in big plastic trash bags and dump them, the Goodwill or the side of the road, doesn't matter. I should wash the worn clothes and put it all aside. Just like I should dust. He shed his little bits of scurf like everyone else and by now it's all dry, true, dust. I really should just wipe things down. I know that all the scent is gone. Decay had its way with his traces in a way that it didn't quite have a chance to do with his body. But I keep the doors and windows shut anyway. 

There was a stake out where he expounded (and that's exactly the word) about the tradition of grave goods. Such a know-it-all, but he couldn't help it. It was in there, and he had to share it, "because it's interesting, man. Yes, really." And he subsided for a minute, but you couldn't keep him down; not too often anyway. It was late and cold. Sometimes his voice burred deep and rough, then would rise with his enthusiasm. Always made him sound young. He could morph into a baby-face too, pretty often. Pissed him off. "Nobody takes you seriously if you look sixteen. It's a complete pain." 

He nattered about the Egyptians, of course, and Sutton Hoo, and the Incas. There's no escaping Peru. I tried to show willing by chiming in with the Chinese buried warriors. I think he appreciated that because I got the surprised, teasing, "hey, you're not just a dumb cop" expression. 

So many old burials complete with furniture even, and jewels, fine food. I've idled away time with the thought of what we might have laid to rest with him, if he wasn't scattered ashes. What sort of offerings would we make to the incomprehensibility of death, our blind determination that things are not allowed to change? If I offered a gun, he'd be as leery of using it there as he was here. Pity. 

The old kings and chieftains, some of them, took their consorts, concubines and servants with them, poison smeared across their lips, strangled with silk ropes, stabbed with jewelled daggers. Sounds like a kindness to me. 

A lot of those long ago men and women planned out their own memorials and tombs, and of course the academics love them for it. The artefacts are beautiful in their own right - only the best for leaders of men, the beloveds of the gods - and there's the insight they give to what went before. But nobody believes now that those dead men and women are parading somewhere wearing their jewellery, driving their chariots, eating their delicacies. 

But I understand those long ago people. I have the teapot tucked into the corner of the kitchen counter, the music cds still in the rack. Here they all are, my grave goods, accompanying me in the afterlife. 

* * *

End Worldly Goods by Mab: [MabinBrowne@hotmail.com](mailto:MabinBrowne@hotmail.com)  



End file.
